1. Sharon Burton
E-mail: Sharon@sharonburton.com
Tweet: Sharonburton
Photo by Rachel Houghton

2.  I’m Sharon Burton
▪ Content Strategy consultant
 Been in the Tech Comm industry for nearly 20 years
 STC Associate Fellow
 Teach:
▪ Technical Communication to Engineering students at the University
of California, Riverside
▪ Tech Comm certificate program at UCR Extension
▪ STC Certificate Courses
▪ University of Redlands
 I knit, crochet, design patterns, write, garden, have a large
dog, and am all around just fun

3. Quick definition

4.  Topic-based authoring is a modular content creation approach (popular in the
technical publications and documentation arenas) that supports XML content
reuse, content management, and makes the dynamic assembly of personalized
information possible.
 A topic is a discrete piece of content that is about a specific subject, has an
identifiable purpose, and can stand alone (does not need to be presented in
context for the end-user to make sense of the content).
 Topics are also reusable. They can, when constructed properly (without
reliance on other content for its meaning), be reused in any context anywhere
needed.
 The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is a standard designed to help
authors create topic-based content. The standard is managed by the
Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)
DITA Technical Committee.
From Wikipedia

5.  Focuses effort on the information your user needs to
use the product
 Develop a body of information that’s helpful to the user
 Maximize content reuse
 Roughly similar to structuring an online help system
 People who’ve developed a lot of help “get” these
concepts faster
 If you are moving to DITA, it’s part of the trip
 But you don’t have to move to DITA to make use of this
information development method
 This can be a destination as well as a rest stop

6.  Topics are small, perhaps ½ to 4 printed pages
 Perhaps smaller
 Only include the information needed to
 Perform one procedure
 Understand one concept
 Topics can be (re)combined
 New products, deliverables, or other ways
 Topics are easier to update
 Easier and cheaper to get approval for updating topics
from management
 Depending on deliverables, push updated topics to
your users

7. Library
Adding About
Programming
Users
Objects and
Relating Inheritance
Objects Importing
Placing Setting
Objects
Reports
Permissions
Containing Editing
Objects Reports
Deleting Printing Setting
Reports Schedules
Users About
About
Objects Reports
Using
Container
About Objects
Schedules
About Users
Customizing
Objects
Saving
Creating reports
Reports
Exporting
Objects
About
Containment

8. Library
Admin Guide Programmers Guide Getting Started
• About Users • About • About Users
• Adding Users Programming • About Reports
• Deleting Users • About Objects • About
• Setting • Placing Objects Programming
Permissions • About • About Objects
• About Reports Containment • About
• Creating Reports • Objects and Containment
• Editing Reports Inheritance • Exporting Objects
• Saving Reports • Using Container • About Schedules
Objects
• Printing Reports
• Customizing
• Importing Reports
Objects
• Relating Objects

9. How to mess this up

10.  Management and other teams need to
understand why this is better
 This is not going to see an instant and
dramatic improvement
 Except localization
 Costs may drop immediately
 Schedules may be impacted
 Less content can be scary

11.  The tools that got you into this mess are
probably not the tools to get you out
 Asking Techwr-l what they use and buying
that not the answer
 Doesn’t hurt to ask
 Evaluate what your needs are now and in the
future
 Work with the vendors closely to make sure
what you need is what they can do

12.  The processes for developing, editing, and
publishing a 200 page manual won’t work
 Developing Topic-based content is different
 Topics “stand alone” on content and/or
formatting
 Topics are reviewed as they are ready
 Review process must change
 Maybe use a special review product

13.  New tools + new process = training
 Not training sets projects and people up for
failure
 Training provides more than how to use the
product
 Includes best practices for our workflow
 Identifies the changes for our workflow
 Instantiates how we do what we do

14.  Your legacy content is not going to fit neatly
 It’s at least not well written/structured/organized
 You can’t jump on your horse and ride off in all
directions
 You need to analyze what you have before you can decide
what you have
 One manual may not give you the real picture
 Especially if you had a lot of contractors, the legacy
content has been around a long time, and so on
 This can be very hard
 People want their content to be the exception
 It’s special content, not like other content and needs
special attention

15.  Before we can start thinking about moving to
topic-based authoring
 And gaining the benefits thereof
 We must have good writing standards in place
 Content reuse demands consistent writing
standards
 The content can appear in many places
 In more than one deliverable
 You may need to localize so why not
prepare now?

16.  Because most tools allow you to import and
slice your legacy content based on headings,
it can feel like you’re done when you import
 That’s step #1 of x and x is bigger than 2
 Now you need to think about
 Content reuse
 Smaller topics
 Embedded topics (snippets)
 Localization?

17.  Rewriting existing content is expensive
 You can’t reuse what you can’t find
 Opportunistic reuse
 People remember this content from before
 Maybe they can find it
 Big time sink
 Systematic reuse
 The system knows this content has been written
previously
 Prompts the writer for reuse
 Tracks reuse and reports it

18.  Develop information based on the users’
information needs
 The next logical step in Minimalism
 Matches the Use Case or Scenario dev
environment
 Minimalism is not writing as little as possible
 It’s developing the information your users actually
need
 NOT how the database is structured
 How to run a report and print it

19.  Your legacy content is going to fit neatly in
content categories
 It won’t take any time to figure this out
 We can do this as we need to
 It’s easy
 We’ll hire an intern to do it
 We can meet deadlines while we
completely restructure all
our content

20.  Single Sourcing: Building Modular Documentation
by Kurt Ament
 ISBN-10: 0815514913 or ISBN-13: 978-0815514916
 Information Development: Managing Your Documentation
Projects, Portfolio, and People
by JoAnn T. Hackos
 ISBN-10: 0471777110 or ISBN-13: 978-0471777113
 User and Task Analysis for Interface Design
by JoAnn T., PhD Hackos and Janice C. Redish
 ISBN-10: 0471178314 or ISBN-13: 978-0471178316

21.  Wait a Minute, I Have to Take Off My Bra,
2011. ISBN-10: 0981333516.
 Anthology of creative non-fiction and poetry
 My first creative non-fiction book publication
 You should by it! Available on Amazon.
 Click here.

22. Contact me:
E-mail: Sharon@sharonburton.com
Twitter: Sharonburton